Year in review: UU World’s most-read stories of 2017

Our news coverage—especially of the hiring practices controversy and the resignation of UUA President Peter Morales—drew the most attention this past year.

CHRISTOPHER L. WALTON | 1/2/2018

Five of UU World’s ten most-read stories in 2017—and eight of the top twenty—were news articles about the Unitarian Universalist Association’s hiring practices controversy, which erupted in March and dominated UU conversation for the next three months. Even though most of our readers still depend on the print edition of the magazine, it is gratifying to the editors that our news stories—which appear first online before being abridged for the print magazine—drew so much attention this year. Twelve of the top twenty most-read stories were news articles.

If our traffic is any indication, our readers were especially interested in articles about racism: Four of the eight non-news stories that drew the largest audiences are explicitly about it (and two were from our archives)—and the hiring practices controversy was for many people fundamentally about institutional racism and white supremacy. More than half of our most-read stories addressed racism or institutional responses to racism.

Finally, five of our top twenty stories this year came from the vault—either stories we promoted from years past or that continue to draw their own attention, thanks to the power of search engines and social media.

Meet Our Senior Minister

Rev. Schuyler Vogel serves as the Senior Minister of the Fourth Universalist Society in the City of New York. He holds degrees in religion from Carleton College and Harvard Divinity School and has served congregations in Wisconsin, Illinois, and Florida.